Canon EF 75-300 III F4-5.6 USM Lens

This lens was the first one I bought for my Canon 350D almost three years ago. It has a wide focal length range covering portrait to fairly long telephoto and is extremely well priced.

The lens is well constructed, and despite being inexpensive, does not look cheap. It is, however, quite light, and for such a long lens, balances well on the small Canon cameras. There are textured grips to adjust both for focal length and manual focus. These work smoothly and lightly, but the requirement to turn the lens body to the left to increase the focal length does not feel natural to me. There is no collar fitted to connect to a tripod, but the lens is light enough not to require one.

One of the best features of the lens is 'USM', or "Ultrasonic Motor", this gives the Canon a quiet autofocus mechanism (much quiter than other non-Canon lenses I own), but I must admit to being a little disappointed with the autofocus speed. It's reasonably quick, but not as quick as I'd hoped for. The front element also rotates as it changes focus. This makes use of a polarizer more problematic. The lens accepts 58mm filters (a protective UV filter element might be a good idea as the front element is quite close to the end of the lens body and therefore quite vulnerable).

The lens has reasonable macro capabilities and can focus as close as 4.9ft away from a subject. This, at the longer focal lengths, allows for frame filling pictures of flowers or insects for example.

Optically, the lens is a bit of a mixed bag. Chromatic aberration (colour fringing) is reasonably well controlled, only becoming noticeable in high contrast areas away from the centre of the image. Distortion is also negligible and contrast is good.

Where the lens does not excel, is in its sharpness. Lower down the focal length range (75-150mm) the lens is reasonably sharp. Sharpness drops off quite a bit once the long end of the range is reached. This gives quite a soft image when viewed at 100%. It is sharp enough to take acceptable 8x10" pictures, however. If the lens is stopped down to f/8, the sharpness is improved a little.

Overall, this is a competent, usable lens for the price. Those looking for the last word in sharpness will have to look elsewhere (and pay a lot more), however.

Summary: Anyone in the market for this type of lens should consider this.